Sometimes, no matter how much creativity and energy you pour into an advertising campaign, you still don’t generate enough buzz for your website or business. This is clearly very frustrating for any business owner, because you put your heart and soul into marketing your goods and/or services. Two things that are often overlooked when “spreading the word” are the power of using word-of-mouth and the power of effective networking.
Word of mouth advertising is easily one of the least expensive, yet possibly one of the most effective forms of advertising. Take the summer movie season, for example. Big budget films like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, and Transformers: The Movie come with a lot of marketing muscle and they bombard you with advertising from every direction. They spend loads of money on producing the movie and then they unload tons more on marketing it. As such, when you see the receipts over the weekend, it sounds like they did great, but you have to factor in how much money was spent to get that movie on the screen (and your butt in the seat). Contrast this to sleeper hits like Knocked Up. I’ve seen very few commercials on TV and very few print ads in the newspaper, yet it has become one of this summer’s biggest movies. And then you factor in that the movie cost very little to produce, compared to special effects-laden flicks like Pirates. Create buzz by getting people to talk about you. This can be achieved through viral videos, blog contests, and all sorts of other ways. When people talk, this is much more valuable than any billboard can ever be.
Second, networking goes a very long way. Speaking from my own experience as a freelance writer, I have seen quite a bit more interest in my services since affiliating myself with John Chow. I met John through a mutual acquaintance, who told John that I was a writer. Chow then hired me to write product reviews for The TechZone as well as site reviews for his personal blog. John Chow’s blog has a much larger readership than my own blog, and so I got noticed by people who may not have otherwise known about me. In fact, the blogging position that I hold here at BlueFur is a direct result of my relationship with John Chow. Gary Jones of BlueFur would have never known who I was otherwise.
On a grander scale, we are in the middle of a format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. When the battle started, they were pretty even, but it seems that Blu-ray is currently pulling ahead and this is for several reasons. One of the biggest ones that I’ve noticed is that the Blu-ray Group (not to be confused with the Blue Man Group) has partnered up with Blockbuster, the latter of which will now exclusively carry the Blu-ray format, pushing HD DVD aside. People want to rent movies and if they can’t rent HD DVD, then they may be less inclined to buy an HD DVD player.
